S2 Eighth Episode

 S2 Ep 8

Hello, and thank you for putting your ear to the Listening Tube! I’m your host, Bob Woodley. On this edition, we’ll hear about a legendary duel, the Soviet Union’s official propaganda machine, and ooohhh, did it just get cold in here? But first, (not the headlines)….

One of the reasons I started this program was because I was disappointed with the job the media was doing, and with how social media had become a poor replacement. We once had a respected profession that created legendary personalities like Walter Cronkite, who Americans knew they could trust to deliver the news as it was defined back then. That was before news and opinion got all entangled like it is on this program. A new study by the Pew Research Center asked almost 12-thousand journalists in the United States what they thought of their jobs and their industry. The results are revealing. For the record, even though I’m a trained and award-winning journalist, I was not asked to be a part of the survey. The opinions expressed in the survey may not be the opinions of the program host. See what I did there? If you lump all journalists together, they seem to be happy. Given the chance, 77 percent of journalists would pursue a career in journalism again. I gotta admit, journalism school was fun. Seventy-five percent of journalists are extremely or very proud of their work. Those who are extremely proud of their work might have some ego issues, but it’s easy to be very proud of your work when you’re a journalist. Being a journalist gives you the opportunity to inform people in a way that may save their lives, or entertain them. Both are worthy and rewarding. At the same time, 72 percent of journalists use negative words to describe the industry, with “struggling” and “chaos” being the most common descriptions. 

Journalists in the United States also consider it a major problem when people with the same political views get their news from the same source. In fact, the survey shows about 95 percent of journalists think it’s at least a minor problem, with 75 percent saying it’s a major problem. The rest of us are less divided on the issue, with 23 percent of us thinking it’s not a problem at all. Still, most everybody thinks getting your news from one source is a bad idea. Us regular folk and the journalists who took part in the survey have different opinions about a couple of things. Only half of us think made-up news is a big problem for the country, while 71 percent of journalists think so. Journalists have a less optimistic sense of whether or not the news they deliver will be believed by all as being accurate, while the rest of us are 10 percent more confident in a journalists work than they are. We have more confidence in journalists than they have in themselves. Do they deserve our confidence? The survey showed that more than 80 percent of journalists believe they should keep their personal views out of their reporting. But at the same time, 43 percent say they are often unable to report a story without incorporating their personal views. Are you thinking what I’m thinking? Yea, what’s this Bob Woodley guy up to? In any case, journalists themselves think they’re doing a much better job than the rest of us think they’re doing. When it comes to covering the most important stories of the day, reporting the news accurately, being a watchdog of our government, recognizing the underrepresented and managing or correcting misinformation, the press thinks they’re doing a much better job than we think they’re doing. The same Pew Research Center survey tells us that more than half of journalists think every side of a story doesn’t deserve equal coverage. Upon closer examination, this is loaded question. There’s a difference between reporting two sides of a story, and reporting every side of a story. Every story has at least two sides. Two of those sides might be liberal and conservative. There might be other opinions about the issue that don’t fall within the range of the generally accepted, yet opposing viewpoints. Maybe it’s a radical new theory of how to solve a problem, and we missed out on it because of our own ignorance, or maybe because it requires the harvesting of DNA from a monster from the future. So maybe not every side of a story needs equal coverage. But, 76 percent of the rest of us believe in equal coverage. If you seek equal coverage, you’re more likely to find it where older news traditions still exist, as online journalists were least likely to care about equal treatment. Radio and newspaper journalists were more committed to a variety of viewpoints than online, with television reporters the most concerned with equal coverage. That’s that tally among journalists as a group. When you break down the journalists into political parties, the disparity appears. If you ask journalists who work for left-leaning news organizations, only 37 percent of them believe in equal treatment of stories, while 57 percent of journalists who work for right-leaning new organizations believe in equal coverage. Even among non-journalists, only 68 percent of liberals say the want all sides of a story covered, compared to 87 percent of conservatives who say they want to hear all sides of the story. As a result, trust in the media is falling, especially among Republicans. This distinction between conservatives and liberals when it comes to media coverage is telling. What is says is that conservatives are more likely to expect, and willing to accept, another side of the story. The survey shows that those who lean liberal, citizens and journalists alike, are less likely to share, or be interested in, another side of the story. Journalists aren’t supposed to choose sides when they deliver the news. They are certainly entitled to their opinions, and are free to express them in the proper forum. Having left and right-leaning news outlets, that find journalist who already have views similar to the editorial slant of the organization, has given us a glimpse of how Americans really feel. As it turns out, most Americans want to hear more sides of the issues. Americans are going to find news sources that give them more sides of the issues. The evidence would suggest that liberal news outlets aren’t where Americans are going for their news. According to Adweek dot com’s TV Newser, this past Thursday, the ten most watched cable news shows were on Fox News, and, the Gutfeld program often transcends cable and outperforms all of the network programs in its time slot. That includes Colbert, Kimmel and Fallon. Look, I’ve said on this program before that every media outlet has a slant, every reporter has an angle, every editor has a viewpoint that will shine through in what your read, see and hear. Clearly, Americans, and I hope all people around the world, want to hear more than one side of an issue. We want to be trusted to gather information and come to a conclusion based on what we’ve learned. News organizations who trust us with all the information are the ones who gain our trust in return. 

Having said that, another story about the media flew in under the radar recently. The Associated Press announced that they’ve created a new department title: Democracy Editor. The Democracy Editor’s role is described as, managing coverage on challenges to democracy, voting rights, election processes and related areas.” The Associate Press believes that there are enough stories around the country about elections and the election process they can can keep a lot of reporters busy. Like all politics, voting and elections are local. But that’s not where the story ends. At least not the story I read. It was a CNN Business story, that spent four paragraphs on the announcement, quoting an AP executive about the need for the position, especially with the mid-term elections around the corner. Then the story wonders about the effect the election will have on the major political parties, and points out that many media organizations will be particularly interested in Donald Trumps influence. I don’t know why CNN thinks they can just speak for other media organizations, but they did. The next paragraph of the story is the really interesting part, though. Right after they mention Donald Trump, they have a quote that says, “"We have an extremist wing, an extremist element, within the conservative movement that is trying to basically take over the Republican party," The quote was from another guest on the same program from where they pulled the AP Editor quote. But this was a quote from a Huffingont Post Editor-in-Chief. She went on to say, "The press, American people, all of us, anyone who's pro-Democracy, pro-free press, pro-equality, this is what we're up against because these are the things these people do not want." I’m gonna hafta say that’s not an accurate statement. She’s accusing conservatives of being anti-free-press, when more people watch Fox News than even claim to be conservative. As for being pro-equality, the Pew survey shows that conservative journalists are more inclined to share both sides of an issue. CNN wasn’t done quoting her. The Editor-in-Chief of a news organization went on to say, "That's why it's so important for the press to keep banging the drum. This is not the time to be shy, this is not the time to demure away from something, this is not the time to just 'both sides' something to death. There is no both sides to whether or not you're pro-democracy and pro-free press." OK, that last part’s true. But when is it the press’s responsibility to “bang the drum” on anything? And since when has the press been shy? And until recently, the press didn’t demure away from anything. But if you don’t want to “both sides” something to death, why are you even in the news business? But getting back to the CNN article, it clearly demonstrates how a news organization can take a fairly benign story like a new department at the Associated Press, and turn it into an assault on a political party, while at the same time, reinforcing the doctrine that you don’t deserve both sides of the story, just as was demonstrated in the Pew Research survey of nearly 12-thousand journalists. 

This week in 1787, Congress established the North West Territory. Yes, the great northwest. Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana. Wait a minute. This was in 1787. At that time, the North West Territory was an expanse of land west of Pennsylvania. It covered what is now Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and part of Minnesota and Wisconsin. That was the wild west back then. It was the first organized, incorporated territory of a relatively new nation. The colonies had declared themselves States just over a decade earlier, and the westward expansion had begun. The North West Territory didn’t last long, though. Sixteen years later, the southeast portion of it became the state of Ohio, and the rest of the territory became part of what was now the Indiana Territory. That was thanks to a very important legislative move by the US Congress called the Ordinance of 1787. It established that all new territories would be under the control of the Federal government, and that individual states couldn’t expand their boundaries into a new territory. It established how the rest of the states were created. Once a part of a territory was able to grow to a population of 60-thousand people, it could establish boundaries and apply for Statehood. A new state would have equal rights and responsibilities in the Continental Congress as the 13 original States. The Ordinance of 1787 did more than that, though. It also established the concept that somebody who buys land owns that land in perpetuity, with the right to sell it or give it away. It also established natural navigation routes in the territory in anticipation of expansion, stating "The navigable waters leading into the Mississippi and St. Lawrence, and the carrying places between the same, shall be common highways and forever free, as well to the inhabitants of the said territory as to the citizens of the United States, and those of any other States that may be admitted into the confederacy, without any tax, impost, or duty therefor."

This week in 1789, citizens of Paris storm the Bastille prison. This is widely recognized as the beginning of the French Revolution. If you want to read a good book, A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens is a wonderful representation of the time. One of my English teachers made me read it in high school. I wouldn’t admit it then, but I enjoyed it so much I’ve since read it again. But as much as Bastille Day is celebrated in France, it was a document that resulted from the unrest that I find most interesting. Still in use today, it’s called the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. There are 17 of them. Here they are:

Article I – Human Beings are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions can be founded only on the common good.

Article II – The goal of any political association is the conservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, safety and resistance against oppression.

Article III – The principle of any sovereignty resides essentially in the Nation. No body, no individual may exercise any authority which does not proceed directly from the nation.

Article IV – Liberty consists of doing anything which does not harm others: thus, the exercise of the natural rights of each man has only those borders which assure other members of the society the fruition of these same rights. These borders can be determined only by the law.

Article V – The law has the right to forbid only actions harmful to society. Anything which is not forbidden by the law cannot be impeded, and no one can be constrained to do what it does not order.

Article VI – The law is the expression of the general will. All the citizens have the right of contributing personally or through their representatives to its formation. It must be the same for all, either that it protects, or that it punishes. All the citizens, being equal in its eyes, are equally admissible to all public dignities, places, and employments, according to their capacity and without distinction other than that of their virtues and of their talents.

Article VII – No man can be accused, arrested nor detained but in the cases determined by the law, and according to the forms which it has prescribed. Those who solicit, dispatch, carry out or cause to be carried out arbitrary orders, must be punished; but any citizen called or seized under the terms of the law must obey at once; he renders himself culpable by resistance.

Article VIII – The law should establish only penalties that are strictly and evidently necessary, and no one can be punished but under a law established and promulgated before the offense and legally applied.

Article IX – Any man being presumed innocent until he is declared culpable if it is judged indispensable to arrest him, any rigor which would not be necessary for the securing of his person must be severely reprimanded by the law.

Article X – No one may be disquieted for his opinions, even religious ones, provided that their manifestation does not trouble the public order established by the law.

Article XI – The free communication of thoughts and of opinions is one of the most precious rights of man: any citizen thus may speak, write, print freely, except to respond to the abuse of this liberty, in the cases determined by the law.

Article XII – The guarantee of the rights of man and of the citizen necessitates a public force: this force is thus instituted for the advantage of all and not for the particular utility of those in whom it is trusted.

Article XIII – For the maintenance of the public force and for the expenditures of administration, a common contribution is indispensable; it must be equally distributed to all the citizens, according to their ability to pay.

Article XIV – Each citizen has the right to ascertain, by himself or through his representatives, the need for a public tax, to consent to it freely, to know the uses to which it is put, and of determining the proportion, basis, collection, and duration.

Article XV – The society has the right of requesting an account from any public agent of its administration.

Article XVI – Any society in which the guarantee of rights is not assured, nor the separation of powers determined, has no Constitution.

Article XVII – Property being an inviolable and sacred right, no one can be deprived of private usage, if it is not when the public necessity, legally noted, evidently requires it, and under the condition of a just and prior indemnity. 

As you can hear, these articles are much like the Magna Carta or the Amendments to the United States Constitution comprising the Bill of Rights. What it demonstrates is that people knew that there was a right way and a wrong way to be governed. There was no argument against being governed. Society can’t be a free-for-all. We have rights as human beings. We always had responsibilities to governments, dating back to ancient times we were subjected to servitude or taxation. We lived or died at the whim of those who governed. Even though we didn’t like it, we accepted being governed. It’s when we began expecting rights to go along with our responsibilities, that governments started changing. The best way we’ve found to be governed so far is for the people to give the power to the government, not the other way around. Unfortunately, here in America, the people now have very little to say about how we’re governed other than how we vote. We may have all the rights given to us by the Constitution, but we no longer have the power given to us by the Declaration of Independence. 

1790 Congress establishes Dist of Columbia. Perhaps one of the most unique places in the world, not only is it America’s capital, it’s also run by the federal government in much the same way the Queen rules England. There’s a mayor and a 13-member city council, but anything they do can be overruled by Congress. Just to make sure it stays that way, Washington, D.C. doesn’t have a voting member of said Congress, just a token member of the House, and no representative in the Senate. There’s been a movement since 1800 to make Washington, D.C. a state, and even thought the House passed a resolution supporting the idea, it has yet to appear in the Senate. This spoke-and-wheel designed city is an interesting place to visit, though. It’s full of monuments and museums. My wife and I have visited several times, but that was before fencing was put up all over the place. We were visiting the Capitol grounds one day when a very interesting protest was happening. As we approached the Capitol steps, some of the signs came into focus, and the words of the protesters became clear. The crowd there that day was protesting circumcision. There were signs claiming that circumcision was mutilation, and that no child should have to go through that. There was a man there with a guitar singing songs about the evils of circumcision. Just moments later, a few busses pull up with an elementary school field trip. All I could think was, “Boy, I’m glad I’m not one of those teachers right now.” 

1804 Vice President Aaron Burr kills Alexander Hamilton in a pistol duel near Weehawken, New Jersey. It’s probably the most famous duel in not only colonial American history, but all of American history. But how did it come to be that two prominent American political figures would actually point guns at each other?

Look that up liner

Even though these two men fought together in the Revolutionary War on General Washington’s staff, their political agreement ended there. While Hamilton favored the federal system, Burr was something of a political outlier. While Hamilton went on to form our government, Burr went to New York to practice law. But then Burr beat Hamilton’s father in law for a New York Senate seat, and the rivalry became palpable. Four years before the duel, Burr ran for President. Back then, whoever got the second-most electoral votes became vice-president. Burr was just hoping to become Thomas Jefferson’s second-in-command, but they both ended up with 73 electoral votes, and after 35 votes in the House of Representatives to break the tie, Jefferson won on the 36th vote. Alexander Hamilton didn’t want Burr to become President, and launched a letter-writing campaign against Burr. It worked. Burr wouldn’t forget. Jefferson wasn’t fond of Burr, either, and when the next election came in 1804, Burr decided that he would again run for Governor of New York. But Hamilton continued his campaign against Burr. Hamilton’s opinion of Burr having poor character, and criticizing Burr’s leadership ability were published, and that led to an exchange of letters between Burr and Hamilton. Burr demanding an explanation of the accusations and Hamilton obliging. These two men actually argued with each other via letters! Now, I don’t know the speed of the mail back in 1804, but just imagine you get a letter from your rival, and whilste reading it, your blood begins to boil, you become so enraged that you need to pour yourself a good, stiff stein of mead. You’re incensed at the nerve of the opposing gentleman, “Can you believe he wrote that? Well, I never…!” Well, Arron Burr, in a letter, challenged Hamilton to a duel. I don’t know about you, but I can’t imagine getting challenged to a duel via letter, but I guess it’s better than getting a letter that says the next time I see you I’m going to kill you. At least with the challenge of a duel, you have an honest chance of winning. Hamilton accepted. Spoiler Alert! I’m about to tell you how the Burr/Hamilton duel played out. A blog called journey with murphy dot com tells the story well. Both men left Manhattan on separate boats, as part of the plan to keep the duel a secret. Each man was accompanied by a “second” who’s responsibilities included making sure the proceedings went according to the gentlemen’s rules. One other man, a doctor, was in attendance. Two shots rang out. Historians say that Hamilton intentionally missed Burr, but Burr’s aim was true, and lethal. He had finally vanquished his personal rival. Hamilton didn’t die right away, though. He was returned by boat to Manhattan, and survived long enough to say goodbye to his wife and children. One of Hamilton’s children wasn’t able to see him, though. His son Phillip also died in a duel at the very same location in Weehawken, New Jersey almost three years earlier. The doctor who attended Alexander Hamilton’s fatal duel was also the same doctor who attended the fatal duel of his son, Philip before him. 

This week in 1850, the first public demonstration of ice made by refrigeration takes place in Florida. If you want to show off your ice machine, you do it in July in Florida. There’s a story on wired that cites the Smithsonian and the John Gorrie State Museum as sources that describes how the ice machine was introduced to the public. It was invented by a doctor and civic leader in his community, and discovered that cooled air could help his patients. He began experimenting with how to cool air and water. Back then, ice had to be transported from northern areas where nature provided the freezer. We could move ice to southern climates, and store it in special ways to make it last longer. But in Florida, you would be running out of ice by the middle of July. Doctor John Gorrie didn’t introduce his ice machine as a medical tool, instead he used a social occasion to celebrate Bastille Day given by the French consul. He first walked around a bit sipping warm wine and complaining about it, then announced, “On Bastille Day, France gave her citizens what they wanted. [Consul] Rosan gives his guests what they want, cool wines! Even if it demands a miracle!" With that, in came waiters with bottles of wine on trays of mechanically-made ice. Those in attendance were impressed. Smithsonian called the event the “chilly reception.” Now who’s cool? The good doctor’s success didn’t last long. He died broke five years later. 

This week in 1864, Confederate forces led by Gen J. Early begin their invasion of Washington, D.C. It wouldn’t be the last time Washington, D.C. was invaded. Most of us were alive for the last couple of times.

1925 TASS became the USSR's official news agency. It still exists today, and you can go to their English-speaking website if that’s the language you speak. It’s certainly a different point of view than we get from the western press. It’s origins go back as far as 1902, but was established by decree in 1925 to have "exclusive right to gather and distribute information outside the Soviet Union, as well as the right to distribute foreign and domestic information within the Soviet Union, and manage the news agencies of the Soviet republics." It wasn’t a big secret that in order to maintain control of the people, you had to maintain control of the press. TASS became the mouthpiece of the Soviet Communist government, and it’s loyalties were rewarded when the Soviet Union was dissolved in the early 1990’s. 

Another decree in 1992 re-defined its status and renamed it, although the mission didn’t change. It got its original name back in 2014. Today, it’s used as a weapon of Russia against their own people. Allowing TASS to regulate and disseminate information as the Putin administration sees fit, at the expense of the people’s dignity, or perhaps to spare their embarrassment. Organizations like TASS are why our founding fathers were insistent on giving the press the freedom it has in America. The sad part is, many American news organizations have also become mouthpieces of government entities. 

This week in 1933, the first police radio system was operated in Eastchester Township, New York. You can run, but you can’t out run the radio! 

In 1975 , Soyuz 19 and Apollo 18 launched, and they would meet in space 2 days later. This was the height of American/Soviet relations. From this point on, we figured we’d get along fine with the Russians. And we do, but only outside the planets atmosphere and gravitational pull. Astronauts were the peacemakers then, and they’re still keeping the peace on the international space station. Some people question why we should explore space. Maybe sending people out there is futile. There’s just too much space between here and there. We can’t travel at the speed of light, and even if we could, it would still take too long for humans to get anywhere. But do you know what can travel at the speed of light? Well, obviously the answer is light. And if you said light, you are correct! Well, in case you didn’t know, there’s a new telescope able to capture light that hasn’t even got to us yet. It’s called the James Webb Space Telescope. A million miles from Earth, the months long mission is prepared to send back its first fully-functional images this week. This next-generation telescope will bring the rest of the universe closer to us than any manned mission can with our current science. The people who put it there aren’t even sure what we’ll discover. We might be able to peer into alien living rooms! We’re still discovering things at the bottom of our oceans and in the depths of our jungles. Why would above us be any different? The Webb Telescope will see things that our eyes can’t, detect chemicals we can’t smell, and almost taste the universe. It will be able to pinpoint stars and any planets that may be orbiting them, and measure the chemical composition of the atmospheres of distant objects. For now, it’s the telescopes that explore the final frontier better than the astronaut. We might get there someday. In the meantime, we’re all welcome aboard the exploration of our universe, able to go farther than a billions years could ever take you. At the speed of light, back in time, before that light was even supposed to get here, or after it has faded away. Because of our ability to share, we can all be explorers, and the people who brought you the James Webb Space telescope are looking forward to bringing you along for the adventure. No additional G-forces required.

The Listening Tube is written and produced by yours truly. Copyright 2022. Thank you for putting your ear to the Listening Tube. I’m your host, Bob Woodley for thou ad infinitum.